The Twylight Tower Read Online Free

the handsome actor was so stuck on himself he hadn’t the slightest notion she felt that way. While he flirted with many a household maid, the wretch treated Meg only as a companion or pupil, since he’d taught her to talk and walk to resemble Her Majesty—and urged her to be her bumpkin self for contrast the rest of the time. But what Meg liked best about the day was that she was still out of London, where her husband no one knew about could not find and claim her and make her leave the queen.
    A little distance off, Meg’s royal mistress strolled hand-in-hand with Lord Robin around the large, wide-netted dovecote. Meg and Ned’s friend Geoffrey Hammet sat in the low crotch of a pear tree and played one ballad or madrigal after another on his lute, including ones the queen’s own father and courtiers had written. Unfortunately, Geoffrey did like his sack and got Ned to drink too much, but both looked sober enough right now. They sounded good too, sometimes singing sweet duets while Meg kept plaiting strands of gillyflowers and sweet william.
    Her heart began to thud when Ned ambled over and sat down on the turf where she worked. A pox on the man, she thought as she nervously spilled the flower chain off her lap. Ned’s black curly hair and green eyes, not to mention his rugged face and well-turned legs, always affected her like that.
    “You look as smitten by him as our queen,” Ned observed.
    “Mm,” she said, trying not to look into his eyes. She was relieved he thought it was Lord Robin who turned her into a clumsy, stuttering dolt. “What woman wouldn’t, breathing Lord Robin’s air, even a mere lass dubbed Strewing Herb Mistress of the Privy Chamber?”
    “Though our queen mislikes to hear it, just remember the man is married,” Ned said, aping exactly the way Lord Robin talked, “though neither of them acts it sometimes.”
    “Acts it? You would say that,” Meg muttered, gathering her scattered flowers from the ground. “But you were wonderful as the king of Rome in that play scene last night,” she admitted with a sigh.
    “As Caesar, Meg,” he corrected her, resettling his cap as if he still wore the laurel wreath she’d sewed for him of bay leaves. “Yes, I believe my forte is depicting great leaders—”
    “God save us,” Meg interrupted. “Here comes my Lord Cecil with Kat, and neither looking happy.”
    Ned craned his neck. “I haven’t the vaguest notion why,” he said wryly, back to his own voice now. “Cecil and Robert Dudley always get on about as well as the English and the Frenchies.”
    Geoffrey saw them coming too and left off the plaintive song he had just begun. But he strummed three quick chords, which Meg figured would have to do for trumpet fanfare out here.
    The reunion of the queen and her chief minister started well enough, Meg noted, with proper greetings and a thanks to Cecil for what he’d done. But things didn’t stay so nice and quiet.
    “I would like to speak with you alone, Your Majesty,” Secretary Cecil said with a pointed glance at Lord Robin, “about the treaty and the unfortunately still-defiant French attitude, even in defeat.”
    “Say on, my Lord Cecil,” the queen urged, starting to walk around the large, dome-topped cage of cooing birds with Lord Robin still at her side.
    “For your ears only, Your Gracious Majesty, until we present this to the Privy Council, of which, of course, Lord Robert is a part,” Cecil prompted, standing his ground in more ways than one.
    The queen swung back to face him so fast, her bright blue skirts belled out. Meg knew that look on her face. It was usually her sign to find a way quickly out of Her Majesty’s presence.
    “Lord Robert is privy to my business and to be fully trusted,” Elizabeth informed Cecil, her voice cold and clear. Cecil stared her down one moment, then wisely complied.
    “The treaty terms were the best I could get and mean we now have a triple blessing in the French defeat, Your Grace. The